Orangemen's Song

DESCRIPTION: ""Some of my weary moments, I prone to solitude (sic.), I meditate on bygone days." A stranger asks why he is gazing at a rainbow. The singer had been a traveler, but his way was barred. He was shown Old Testament sights. Love should be like the rainbow
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1976 (Cox-FolkMusicInANewfoundlandOutport)
KEYWORDS: religious nonballad
FOUND IN: Canada(Newf)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Cox-FolkMusicInANewfoundlandOutport, pp. 73-75, "Orangemen's Song" (1 text, 1 tune)
NOTES [117 words]: This supposedly was sung at Orangemen's Parades. You'd think they could have found something easier to understand -- although the problem may be just that the informant bollixed his pronouns; it's hard to know who is talking when.
The song's imagery is mostly Old Testament: Jacob's Ladder (Genesis 28:12). The twelve stones at the crossing of the Jordan is Joshua 3:13f. (with a variant involving twelve stones taken from the Jordan in 4:3). Noah's flood and the rainbow is 9:13. I have no idea what "that glorious eight thirteen" in verse eight means; my guess is that it is an error for "nine thirteen," God's promise, symbolized by the rainbow, that there would never again be a great flood. - RBW
Last updated in version 4.3
File: COxN073

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